The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
Satellite broadcasting of television signals has increased in popularity. Satellite television providers continually offer more and unique services to their subscribers to enhance the viewing experience. Providing reliability in a satellite broadcasting system is therefore an important goal of satellite broadcast providers. Providing reliable signals reduces the overall cost of the system by reducing the number of received calls at a customer call center.
In satellite broadcasting systems, users have come to expect the inclusion of local channels in addition to the channels broadcast for the entire Continental United States. Collecting the channels may be performed in various manners, including providing a manned station that receives the signals. The signals may be uplinked from various locations which are described as a remote uplink facility. Providing manned stations increases the labor costs and thus increases the overall cost of the service.
To provide reliable signals, development and monitoring of broadcasted satellite signals is performed. The monitoring of signals may take place at various locations including remote uplink facilities or local collection facilities. Development of receiving devices might take place at various engineering locations and thus the receiving devices may also be controlled. Controlling receiving devices may be performed using a control access packet stream. Conditional access packets are used in many paid video services. Conditional access and data is sent to or from a video service provider to the various receiving to enforce access control in an authorized delivery of content. The conditional access packets are broadcasted to all of the receiving devices and are received by only the targeted receiving devices. Conditional access packets are typically generated in a one-to-many format which may also be referred to as a broadcast format. For development and monitoring purposes it may not be desirable to over-the-air broadcast development packet signals. However, the broadcast format of a conditional access packet signal does not allow a convenient method for communication, development and monitoring using receiving devices.